burn notice Archives - asthejoeflies

May 14 2013

There’s a Burn Notice on my Points: American AAdvantage

Burn Notice: Introduction

Burn Notice: Delta Skymiles Part 1

Burn Notice: Delta Skymiles Part 2

Burn Notice: Hilton HHonors

Burn Notice: American AAdvantage

As I mentioned in my last post, we had to burn our Hilton points due to the impending devaluation. We redeemed our Hilton points for four nights in Bora Bora. So to finish off my burn notice, I had to figure out how to get us there. My wife insisted we go in business class (it’s a de facto five year anniversary trip), so I either needed 300,000 Delta Skymiles or 250,000 American AAdvantage miles. There is a LOT we could have done with 250,000 AA miles, and I tried to convince my wife to go in coach, but to no avail. But it’s okay – points are for burning, right? Here’s how we redeemed the miles for flights to Tahiti.

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May 10 2013

There’s a Burn Notice on my Points: Hilton HHonors

Burn Notice: Introduction

Burn Notice: Delta Skymiles Part 1

Burn Notice: Delta Skymiles Part 2

Burn Notice: Hilton HHonors

Burn Notice: American AAdvantage

I lost track of this series a little bit, so I wanted to finish it. Hilton devalued its award chart MAJORLY back on March 28, 2013. I had saved up about 150,000 HHonors points, so I needed to use them ASAP. I decided that it’d be best to use them for an aspirational property that we’d never otherwise stay at: the Hilton Bora Bora Nui Resort and Spa in Tahiti.

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Apr 02 2013

There’s a Burn Notice on my Points: Delta Skymiles Part 2

Adding a free oneway can really extend the use of your miles (gcmap.com)

Burn Notice: Introduction

Burn Notice: Delta Skymiles Part 1

Burn Notice: Delta Skymiles Part 2

Burn Notice: Hilton HHonors

Burn Notice: American AAdvantage

I’ve had a burn notice on my points for a few weeks now. Last week I talked about how we will be burning our Delta Skymiles to fly to and from Italy in business class this summer. While it seems like we are getting a great trip for our 200,000 Delta Skymiles (which we are), there is a lot more that we could do with them. Since we’re a young family, we didn’t want to push it – but I wanted to illustrate some ways you could extend a trip using the same amount of miles. Hopefully some of you can use these tips to get even more for your miles!

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Mar 29 2013

There’s a Burn Notice on my Points: Delta Skymiles Part 1

Burn Notice: Introduction

Burn Notice: Delta Skymiles Part 1

Burn Notice: Delta Skymiles Part 2

Burn Notice: Hilton HHonors

Burn Notice: American AAdvantage

As I noted in the introduction to my Burn Notice, Delta Skymiles were close to the top of my list of points to burn. Why? Well, there has been speculation for almost a year now that Skymiles are going to be devalued soon – a lot of people believe they might become revenue based. What that would mean potentially is that instead of 100,000 Skymiles being worth a round trip business class award ticket to Europe, it might only be worth $1000 in travel (if each Skymile is valued at one cent). $1000 generally isn’t enough to get a round trip business class award ticket to Europe, so that would be a major devaluation.

Anyway, I convinced my wife that it’d be a good idea to go to Europe with a 6 month old Baby M this summer. Not sure if that’s a good idea but that will obviously be covered this summer. In this post, I’ll outlined how I burned our Skymiles, and how you can too. The point of these Burn Notice points are to give examples of bookings that can give you ideas of how to burn your own points!

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Mar 20 2013

There’s a Burn Notice on My Points: Introduction

Burn Notice: Introduction

Burn Notice: Delta Skymiles Part 1

Burn Notice: Delta Skymiles Part 2

Burn Notice: Hilton HHonors

Burn Notice: American AAdvantage

I’ve decided to put a burn notice on some of my miles. Between my wife and I, we’ve accumulated over one million miles, mostly within the last year and a half or so. Well, as Hilton (most recently) and countless other award programs have taught us time and time again, miles and points are a volatile currency whose value only goes one way: down. So I’ve decided it’s time for us to book a couple of trips. There is no point on sitting on a stockpile of points – so let’s do this. Throughout this series, I will be talking about how I burned these points to give you examples of how you can burn yours!

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